Interesting project, trying to figure out the best way (for users) to access a Linux application (made in house) from within Windows. My initial thought is to use:

X forwarding in PuTTY

VNC

Problem with my ideas above... they don't appear to be simple. For example, having to enter a username & password every time they want to run the application isn't user friendly. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Checking out NoMachine would be a good place to start. (http://www.nomachine.com/features.php) They advertise NX can "seamlessly integrate single X11 applications with the native client desktop", and if you buy a high enough version it can integrate with AD.

Then there is enabling XDMCP and having the Linux box authenticate against AD after joining it to the domain. XDMCP isn't secure, and it's bandwidth heavy, but if you're just using it internally, it could be a solution.

To the saved session you create in the above tutorial, also, turn on x11 forwarding, and set the "remote command" field in putty to be the command to start your x11 app. Your app can now be accessed from a Windows shortcut to "putty -load <session name>". No typing required, at all. I tested this a minute ago using "xcalc" as my remote x11 app. Double click a windows shortcut and I've got a x11 app running off a remote client.

Downside to this is that you'll have to do a one time setup of putty and the public key stuff on each machine. Depending on how secure things need to be, you may also need to set up an account for each user on your Linux box.

Sorry if the above is a bit incoherent and rambly... Not usually awake at this time.

Something else you might look into is Mobaxterm (http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/download.html). It's a self-contained cygwin-type environement. It is just an .exe that has Xorg, OpenSSH, and many other tools built in. If you buy a professional license, you'll get a customizer that will let you create a tailored version of Mobaxterm.

I'm not sure how well the customizer works since I don't have a professional license, but that could solve deployment headaches.

just brew it! wrote:X forwarding over PuTTY (or OpenSSH, if you install Cygwin) with public key authentication is probably your best bet.

I assume the application already exists? (If starting from scratch I'd suggest doing it as a web-based app, that way users could just use a web browser...)

Yes, the group is creating a web-based app. Unfortunately, there's no telling when that will be ready for the general users. When the group gets back from their conference I'll probably start testing more with X forwarding & PuTTY.

Flatland_Spider wrote:Something else you might look into is Mobaxterm (http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/download.html). It's a self-contained cygwin-type environement. It is just an .exe that has Xorg, OpenSSH, and many other tools built in. If you buy a professional license, you'll get a customizer that will let you create a tailored version of Mobaxterm.

I'm not sure how well the customizer works since I don't have a professional license, but that could solve deployment headaches.

I'll check it out, thanks!

And a big thanks to everyone who's been posting here. All these suggestion's have really helped get me thinking in new directions.

They can be, especially if running over the Internet. Should be fine on a LAN though. (I guess we don't know whether that's the case or not here, I was assuming the app was running on a local server.)

The downside of using VNC for something like this is that it'll be a bit more work to set up the multiple headless VNC sessions on the server. It's a bit more resource intensive as well, since each user has their own virtual desktop running on the server instead of just the app (though this may not be an issue if the number of users is small).